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Language and Semiotic StudiesVol. 2 No. 2 Summer 2016

Challenges in Translating ‘International’ Novels: Ishiguro’s Early Works Set in Japan1

Mariko MatsudaJ. F. Oberlin University, Japan

Abstract

This paper discusses the possibilities and difficulties of novels surviving translation by looking at translations of two of Kazuo Ishiguro’s early works into Japanese. Kazuo Ishiguro, an English writer who is conscious that his novels are going to be translated into many languages, tries towritenovels thatare internationally relevant,byavoidingexpressionspeculiar toEnglishlanguageorlocality.However,despitehiseffortstosurvivetranslation,paradoxically,his twoearlyworksset in Japan,whichmightbeexpected tohave fewerdifficulties intranslating into Japanese because of the familiar setting, have some challenges in translation specific to the situation. I will highlight the issue of the domestication of culturally bound words, and then focus on the translation difficulties that occur as a result of the difference of personal pronouns and speech presentations between English and Japanese.

Keywords: Kazuo Ishiguro, translation, personal pronouns, speech presentations

1. Introduction

This paper investigates the difficulty of translating a certain type of English novel into Japanese, that is, a novel written by an English author, which is set in Japan with Japanese characters and narrator. To illustrate I will use Kazuo Ishiguro’s early works: A Pale View of Hills, and An Artist of the Floating World.

Ishiguro is a writer who is very conscious of addressing an international audience. He is well aware his works are going to be translated, and says in several interviews that he has ‘a great urge to write a global novel’ (Bigsby, 1987, p. 25), and that he is trying to write novels that survive translation, always asking himself if its value will survive translation (Wong, 2001, p. 180). He says that, to achieve this, he tries to avoid puns, or

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concepts that are too local and culture-bound, or anything that would not make sense in tenortwentyyears.Forexample,avoidingportrayinghischaractersintermsofwhichparticular district they live in, which restaurants they go to or what kind of designer’s clothes theywear(Gallix,1999,p.145).However,ofcourseheiswellawareofthedangerofthis kind of ‘literary globalization’; he warns that, in trying to avoid localism or cultural particularity, something very important in literature, some kind of poignancy, might be lost.IshigurosaystoGallixthatinthis‘homogenizationofliterature’,knowledgeoftheirown locale, or the language used in their own culture will be ‘ironed out’ and we ‘will end with the equivalent of Newsweek or Time Magazine’(Gallix,1999,p.146).

2. Challenges in Translations

The central research of this paper is to question if it is possible for novels to survive translation, and be internationally appreciated, especially when the writer is making efforts to attain universality without becoming bland and colorless. Despite Ishiguro’s efforts,therewillbelossesandalterationsofnuanceandtone.IwouldliketoexplorefiveproblematicexamplesofEnglishtoJapanesetranslationfoundinIshiguro’searlyworks:the issue of authenticity, the difficulty of choosing between foreignization or domestication when translating culture-bound aspects of a novel, the effect arising from the difficulty of translating English personal pronouns into Japanese, the effect of the different use of speech presentations, and the result of mistranslating personal pronouns.

2.1 AuthenticityTranslation aims to attain not only semantic and pragmatic equivalence, but also to carry the connotation of the original word, subtle nuance and tone of the utterance, and the stylisticaspectsoftheoriginaltext.Nida(1973,pp.32-33)mentionsthatinevaluatinga translation, it is not enough to compare the semantic equivalence of the original sentence with the translated one, but one must check if the original sentence and the translated sentence can derive the most similar response possible from the recipients. This goal can be attainable when the two languages are closely related and have similar cultural background. However, it is very difficult when the two languages are structurally apart and have different construals as in the case of English and Japanese. One-to-one translation seldom makes sense and inevitably some elements are lost in translation. Then, itcanbeexpectedthattranslationofworksinEnglishsetinJapanintoJapaneseshouldbeless difficult, because readers should be able to understand the cultural background. This ispartlytrue,but inaway,difficultiespeculiar tosuchsituationsexist.Thetranslator,Tobita, in the afterword of An Artist of the Floating World, mentions that he had trouble choosing between different tones of voice: either the old-fashioned style that suits the narrator who is a retired painter, or that of a young British novelist’s creation, which must have impressed British readers (Ishiguro, 2006, p. 309).

Jay Rubin who translates Murakami Haruki’s novels into English also comments

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on the conflict he faces (Rubin, 2006): Murakami is strongly influenced by American literature and writes in ‘western’ style, and it is generally felt that his novels read like translationsfromEnglish.ItisthereforeexpectedthattranslatinghisnovelsintoEnglishwould be easy, but Rubin says it is not. When Murakami uses a lot of loan words and literaltranslationsofEnglishidiomsormetaphors,theyhavea‘foreign’andexoticeffectfor Japanese readers and this is one of the qualities that marks the style of Murakami’s works. However, when these loan words and foreignness are translated ‘back’ into English, the uniqueness of his style that stands out in his original Japanese is lost.

Translating Ishiguro’s ‘Japanese’ works into Japanese has similar problems in the opposite direction. Some of the language peculiarities in Ishiguro’s dialogues, such as extremelypoliteinteractionamongthefamilymembersmaysoundattractivelyforeignforEnglish readers and be much appreciated.2 Beedham (2010, p. 27) quotes Norman Page who suggests that Ishiguro used ‘English dialogue that is quite unlike contemporary speech in the English-speakingworldinitsextremeandsometimesarchaicformality’toevokeaforeignlanguage in English. Being asked by Mason (1986, p. 13) how he projected ‘differentiated Japanese voices through the medium of the English language’, Ishiguro answers that his protagonist Ono ‘is supposed to be narrating in Japanese; it’s just that the reader is getting it in English. In a way the language has to be almost like a pseudotranslation’. However, when they are translated back into Japanese, these characteristics are difficult to be represented in Japanese and thus they may not have particular appeal to Japanese readers who read in translation, while little factual errors or awkward behaviors of the characters may cause mild repulsion.

Shibata and Sugano (2009) point out that ironically, in his native country, Ishiguro’s ‘early ‘Japanese’ works presented most problems to critics and readers’ (Shibata & Sugano, 2009, p. 23). Despite these works having brought him prestigious literary prizes in Britain, it was after his 3rd novel, The Remains of the Day, was awarded the Booker Prize that Ishiguro became widely known and appreciated in Japan. Shibata & Sugano go on to say that the problem of translational ‘re-import’ (Shibata & Sugano, 2009, p. 23) account for this less than enthusiastic reception in Japan. This less favorable reception of his ‘Japanese’ novels set in Japan was probably because of some awkwardness or lack of authenticity that was felt by Japanese readers. When they find familiar objects or customs represented slightly strangely, or when they find the characters interacting a little awkwardly, Japanese readersarebemused.Forexample,hischaracters toooften‘bow’inasituationwherenormal Japanese would probably ‘nod’, or men often ‘giggle’ at the door when they make a visit;3abehaviorthatdoesnotresonatewithJapaneseexperience,andisthusnotappreciated. The translators sometimes change situations to make them more acceptable, but sometimes they translate them faithfully with strange effect.

Kazuo Ishiguro left Japan when he was five, and moved to England. Because he has a Japanese name and Japanese face, and the setting of his early works is in Japan, in the early stage, his works were often discussed in connection with his Japaneseness (Beedham, 2010, p. 9). However, Ishiguro rejected being compared to a Japanese novelist

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like Mishima saying ‘it seems highly inappropriate’, adding he has ‘grown up reading Western fiction’ (Mason, 1986, p. 4). Ishiguro often claims he has no firsthand knowledge of Japan, and his novels are not intended as a precise historical account or documentary. Wong (2000, p. 10) mentions that Ishiguro ‘claims that what he writes about Japan is largely invented or produced by his active imagination’. Ishiguro himself says in an interview, ‘I just invent a Japan which serves my needs… out of speculation, out of imagination’ (Mason, 1986, p. 9). He goes on to say that his visual image of Japan was cultivated from ‘domestic films like those of Ozu and Naruse, set in the postwar era, the JapanIactuallyremember’(Mason,1986,p.4).Thisexplainswhytherearesomeinexactdescriptions found in his novels.4

Ishiguro says that he is ‘not overwhelmingly interested in what really did happen’ and he is ‘using Japan as a sort of metaphor’ (Mason, 1986, p. 10). That is, what he is interested in is not what happens actually, but rather the emotional aspect of people, which is not something peculiar to one specific country. This way, he hoped his novels could have universal relevance.

2.2 Problems of domesticated translationTranslators always have to decide on where to stand between foreignization and domestication. Foreignization is being faithful to the original work and keeping the cultural aspects in the original work as they are, while domestication is conforming to the culture of the language being translated into. Cotton Patch GospelbyClarenceJordanisanextremeexampleofdomesticated translation.5 This version of the Bible was published in the United States in the late 1960s and the usual settings and characters of the Bible are largely adapted for the culture of Georgia in that period. Thus Matthew 2:1 says ‘When Jesus was born in Gainesville, Georgia, during the time that Herod was governor, some scholars from the Orient came to Atlanta and inquired’, and in Matthew 3:4 we find, ‘This guy John was dressed in blue jeans and a leather jacket, and he was living on corn bread and collard greens’. This type of ‘adaptation’ (rather than perhaps a translation) may be effective to get the message through to the readers of a specific place and time; however, it is obvious that it cannot have universal relevance.

Most contemporary translators tend to be faithful to the original, and the translators of Ishiguroarenoexception,althoughthereareoccasionaldrawbacksbecauseofIshiguro’sinaccuratedescriptionsofJapanasmentionedabove.Oneexampleis‘athickpostsunkintheground giving the family inscriptions’ describing the front entrance to his friend’s residence (Ishiguro,1989, p. 86). Translated faithfully, it gives an odd impression in Japanese (Ishiguro, 2006, p. 128). Sometimes they have to choose a domesticated translation for the passage to be meaningful for the intended audience. In Ishiguro’s first novel, A Pale View of Hills, the narrator’shusband,Jiroandhisfatherplaychess.Aretiredex-teacherandhissonplayingchess in the late 1940s in Japan is quite unusual and out of place, which could suggest they belong to a rather wealthy and westernized class of people. The translator, Onodera, therefore, replaced it with Shogi, a chess-like game played with flat wooden pieces on a board. This

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alteration is an inevitable domestication to suit the setting of the novel. However, there is a drawback. Jiro who is very irritated by his father’s insistence to continue the game abruptly stands up as if to shake off the pieces.

Clearly, what he had intended was to knock the chess-board across the floor and all the pieces with it… Then he turned back and glared at the chess-board. The sight of the chessmen, still upright on their squares, seemed to anger him all the more, and for a moment I thought he would make another attempt to upset them. (Ishiguro, 1990, p. 131)

Jiro’s anger was depicted through effective personification of the chessmen standing upright, but in Japanese translation, his irritation is not effectively conveyed because Shogi pieces are flat and lie on the board from the beginning. The translator had to translate this part as ‘the Shogi pieces still lie in order or in alignment’ in Japanese, and the effect of the personification of the chessmen angering Jiro is lost.

2.3 The use of personal pronouns The problems translators face in translating personal pronouns in the novels set in Japan are of particular interest in the question of whether or not novels can be translated universally. Even though Ishiguro carefully avoids puns or specific local matters, linguistic aspects that are too deeply embedded in the language, such as personal pronouns and the way people address each other, escape his attention, and can cause problems or mistranslations for the translators.

AnexampleisTobita’sdilemmaintranslatingthetermsofaddressusedamongthefamily members in An Artist of the Floating World. The narrator is a retired Japanese painter, Masuji Ono. The narrative spans a year and a half around 1949. Ono has lost his wife and his only son during the war, and is now living with a younger daughter, Noriko. HismarriedelderdaughterSetsukoisvisitingthem,andNorikoisexpectinghersecondmiai, marriage negotiation. In the 1930s, Ono was at the height of his career as an artist of militaristic paintings, and highly respected by his pupils, but now, in the late 1940s, his past honor and fame has become a source of guilt and apprehension. Although he doesn’t admit it, it is apparent that he is afraid that now his once admired career has become something regrettable and an obstacle to his younger daughter’s marriage. He suspects that his daughters blame his career for the failure of Noriko’s previous miai, marriage negotiation.

One of the difficulties concerns the use of personal pronouns in the dialogues among the family members. The personalities of Ono’s two daughters are very different. Setsuko, the elder daughter is very ‘shy and retiring’ according to Ono, but the younger daughter Noriko is very headstrong. Besides what they say, their difference is shown by the choice of address form to their father. The polite Setsuko often uses third person ‘Father’ when she speaks to Ono, while Noriko uses the more direct ‘you’ to speak to him.

Then Setsuko said: ‘Will Father be coming with us tomorrow? We could still have our family

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outing then.’‘I’d like to. But I’m afraid there’re a few things I have to be getting on with tomorrow.’ ‘What do you mean?’ Noriko broke in. (Ishiguro, 1989, p. 39)

‘It would be very pleasant if Father would accompany us.’ Setsuko said to me. (Ishiguro, 1989, p. 39)

‘So you’re going to stay at home all on your own?’ Noriko asked. (Ishiguro, 1989, p. 39)

Setsuko gave a nervous laugh. ‘Father must forgive me… (Ishiguro, 1989, p. 49)

Actually, in Japanese it is completely natural to use ‘father’ or ‘mother’ when addressing one’s parents, and using an equivalent of ‘you’ to parents sounds insolent or cold. Accordingly, to keep with custom the translator has both the sisters address their father as Otousama, the polite form of Father. As a result, the difference of their attitudes shown by their address toward Ono becomes less conspicuous, and the contrast between the two sisters’ personalities is somewhat diluted.

Noriko addresses her elder sister similarly: ‘What about you, Setsuko?’ (Ishiguro, 1989, p. 39), offering some tea. Here, too, Tobita had to translate ‘you’ and ‘Setsuko’ as Oneesama, a polite form to address one’s elder sister, to conform to Japanese custom, consequently making Noriko’s remark seem more polite in Japanese translation than was intended in the original.

2.4 The effect of different speech presentationsNext, Iwould like tocommenton the translatorTobita’sadaptations related to thedifference of speech presentation. In An Artist of the Floating World, some parts of the Japanese translation sound over-emotional compared with the original. This is because of the difference in the types of speech presentation. Japanese language does not have an exactindirectspeechequivalenttoEnglish.InJapanese,evenwhensomeone’sspeechisreported in indirect speech, first person pronouns used by the original speakers are kept, and the verb form and tense are not affected. Furthermore, the tone or manner of the original speech or thought is often reproduced by added inflections. Thus when indirect speech is translated into Japanese, it tends to be close to direct speech. When Ishiguro’s narrator’s restrained tone of narrative is translated into quasi-direct speech or thought, the personality of the Japanese-speaking narrator is transformed into a more emotional one.BelowareexamplestranslatedlikedirectspeechinJapaneseinUkiyo no Gaka. The original sentences are not even in indirect speech but narrative report of speech or thought act, but they are translated like direct speech or thought.

In sentence 1), ‘with approval’ is translated into a direct thought by the translator using quotation marks. Below, the translation ‘back’ of the underlined part into English is shown in parentheses after the italicized Japanese translation. The translated Japanese

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has become too colloquial and casual for the original English and consequently, does not properly reflect Ono’s personality.

1) I remember looking around me with approval thatfirstnight…(Ishiguro,1989,p.26)→「kanji no ii miseda na」to omotte, (Ishiguro, 2006, p. 38) (thinking ‘This is a nice place,’)

In sentence 2), the narrator’s report of the state of mind is translated into direct thought without quotation marks, with interjection added. Again, this is too colloquial for the original, and for Ono.

2)Youcouldstandatherdoorwayand believe you have just been drinking at some outpost of civilization.(Ishiguro,1989,p.26)→ Ah, ore ha, bunmei no saihate de, sake wo nondanda na to iu kibun ni tachimachi naru. (Ishiguro, 2006, p. 38) (and you immediately feel ah, I’ve been drinking at the jumping-off place of civilization!)

Sentences 3) and 4) are also narrations, but the translator has translated them as direct speech with quotation marks in both cases.

3) I can still recall the deep satisfaction I felt when I learned the Sugimuras—after the most thorough investigation—had deemed me the most worthy of the house they so prized. (Ishiguro, 1989,p.10)→「Tettei teki na chosa no kekka, kakegae no nai ano ie no mochinushi toshite, anata koso saiteki to handan shimashita.」to iu shirase wo kiita… (Ishiguro, 2006, p. 14) (When I heard the Sugimuras had said ‘After the most thorough investigation, we have decided you are the most worthy of our precious and irreplaceable house.’)

4) …, which I took to be an impersonation of someone galloping on horseback across open land. (Ishiguro,1989,p.28)→Uma de hashitteru tsumorida na to watashi ha niranda. (Ishiguro, 2006, p. 41) (I guessed ‘He is pretending to be galloping on horseback.’)

In English, the use of indirect speech, or narrator’s report of speech act, instead of direct speech can imply the speaker’s lack of sincerity or the narrator’s skeptical attitude toward the speaker, or depreciation or ridicule toward the speaker, derived from the formal and more distant and less immediate nature of these speech representations (Leech & Short,2007).InthefollowingexamplefromA Pale View of Hills, Etsuko the narrator is commenting on her husband responding to his father’s request. Through the use of indirect speech, the narrator Etsuko’s discredit of her husband’s attitude is shown in English.

Meanwhile, he would continue to agree readily that such an attack on the family name should be dealt with both promptly and firmly, that the matter was his concern as much as his father’s, and that he would write to his old school friend as soon as he had time. I can see now, with hindsight, how typical this was of the way Jiro faced any potentially awkward confrontation. (Ishiguro,

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1990, p. 126)

However, when the above is translated into Japanese, the indirect speech is translated as if it is Jiro’s direct speech because the underlined third person pronouns do not appear in Japanese translation, and the first person pronouns used by Jiro are kept. In order to reproduceEtsuko’sdeprecatingattitude, the translatoraddedsomeexpressions,kuchi deha, meaning ‘emptily’ or ‘mealy-mouthedly’, and aikawarazu choushi no yoi, meaning ‘repeating a slick response’.

2.5 Personal pronouns that arouse mistranslationThefollowingareexamplesof twoverygravemistranslationscausedby translatorsmisreadingpersonalpronouns.Thefirstexample isfromIshiguro’sfirstnovelA Pale View of Hills. It is a narrative by a middle-aged Japanese woman, Etsuko, who now lives in England. In the present of the novel, in the late 1970s, she recalls one summer in the late 1940s in Nagasaki, when she met Sachiko, and her neglected and disturbed daughter Mariko. Etsuko’s narrative is very reticent and leaves out the crucial events, but the readers learn that she left her Japanese husband and Nagasaki several years after that summer to live with her British second-husband who is now deceased, and that her first daughter Keiko, whom she brought to England, has committed suicide recently. In the novel, Etsuko tells the story of her friend Sachiko and her daughter, when Sachiko was trying desperately to go to the United States with her American lover, forcing her daughter Mariko to accompany them against her will. As the narrative unfolds, this mother and child gradually seem to be a duplicate of Etsuko and Keiko.

This is a story of a woman’s guilty and confused state of mind. She really wants to talk about what happened to her in the past, and how she came to bring her own daughter over to England, but as she can’t face this overwhelmingly painful fact, she instead tells about it through another woman’s story. The story about Sachiko and Mariko is a projection of Etsuko’s guilt concerning what she did to her daughter Keiko. With this doubling effect, the border between the two women becomes blurred.

This dialogue is supposed to take place between Etsuko and Setsuko’s daughter Mariko. Etsuko is trying to persuade Mariko into accompanying her mother to the United States.

After a long silence, she said: ‘I don’t want to go away. I don’t want to go away tomorrow.’ I gave a sigh. ‘But you’ll like it over there.’‘I don’t want to go away. And I don’t like him. He’s like a pig.’‘You’renottospeaklikethat,’Isaid,angrily.Westaredateachotherforamoment,thenshelooked back down at her hands.‘Youmustn’tspeaklikethat,’Isaid,morecalmly.‘He’sveryfondofyou,andhe’llbejustlikea new father. Everything will turn out well, I promise.’The child said nothing. I sighed again.

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‘In any case, I went on, ‘if you don’t like it over there, we can always come back.’This time she looked up at me questioningly.‘Yes,Ipromise,’Isaid,‘Ifyoudon’tlikeitoverthere,we’llcomestraightback.Butwehaveto try it and see if we like it there. I’m sure we will.’The little girl was watching me closely. (Ishiguro, 1990, pp. 172-173)

Through Ishiguro’s clever use of personal pronouns, the readers are gradually induced to wonder whom Etsuko is really talking to. Ishiguro avoids using the proper noun Mariko here, and instead uses personal pronouns or ‘the child’ and ‘the little girl’, which of course conforms to the rule of elegant variation, while creating ambiguity of the identity of the girl. Especially Etsuko’s use of ‘we’ makes a striking effect. Although this can be interpreted as the paternal ‘we’ that an adult sometimes uses to speak to a child, Etsuko using ‘we’ here has an impact, and this convinces the readers of Etsuko’s confused identity. With a shock, the readers realize that Etsuko is actually remembering the conversation with her daughter Keiko who committed suicide, while she is pretending to be recounting the conversation with her friend’s daughter. This is the crucial dialogue for the theme of this novel; transfer of guilt and confused identity. However, this important revelation is completely lost when read in Japanese.

For one thing, a Japanese sentence does not require a subject and for the translation of Etsuko’s remarks, it is necessary to omit the subject to make it sound natural. So it could not be helped that the translator could not show that crucial ‘we’ being used here. However, the translator made a big mistake overlooking Ishiguro’s avoidance of the proper name Mariko as intended ambiguity, and in misplaced kindness, translated each personal pronoun ‘she’ as Mariko, thus completely depriving the Japanese readers of the opportunity to notice the most crucial message.

Another misunderstanding concerning personal pronouns is from An Artist of the Floating World.

Noriko’s second miai went well and she is married to Taro, but the daughters and their husbands worry that Ono doesn’t look well and might consider suicide as a gesture of apology for his paintings that encouraged war, like the case of a famous composer Naguchi who committed suicide apologizing for his pro war songs. His elder daughter tells Ono in an effort to ease his mind, that he is just a painter and unlike Naguchi, his works were not related to the big issues, and that while great as a painter, his influence in the world was limited, so he should not feel responsibility for the war. Overhearing his parents’ conversation, his worried grandson asks Ono ‘Was Mr. Naguchi like Oji?’. Ono answers as follows:

‘I hardly remember what I was talking to Uncle Taro about at the time, but Oji just happened to suggest he had one or two things in common with people like Mr. Naguchi.’ (Ishiguro, 1989, p. 154)

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‘YourOjinevermeantanythingbysayinghewaslikeMr.Naguchi,’Isaid.(Ishiguro,1989,p.155)

‘Oji’6 is a shortened form of Ojiichan, which means Grandpa and this is what Ono calls himself when talking to his grandson, Setsuko’s son. Not using ‘I’, but using other self-specifiers such as Mom or Grandpa is a usual custom for Japanese when talking to their children or grandchildren. Ishiguro used this Japanese custom, and in English, ‘Oji’ requires a third person pronoun and singular verb. The translator mistook the third person pronoun ‘he’ for ‘Uncle Taro’, and made Ono’s reply to his grandson unintelligible for the readers reading in translation.

A concept like personal pronouns is so deeply embedded in each language that people take it for granted, and do not usually think about it, but because of this, mistranslation can happen and when it does, the mistake is serious. It distorts the meaning without being detected by the readers. If even professional translators make these mistakes, then, we should be very careful to check the understanding when dealing with learners.

3. Conclusion

As shown throughout this paper, it is difficult to perfectly survive translation even for novels like Ishiguro’s that are written with so much consciousness of being translated. In the case of translating Ishiguro’s English novels set in Japan into Japanese, the difficulty is partly because of the difficulty translators have with the inherent differences between English and Japanese, and partly because of the mistranslations induced by that difference. The reaction of the Japanese readers to Ishiguro’s Japan when it is translated ‘back’ into Japanese is also problematic. Of particular concern for the translators, and the area in which there occurs the most awkwardness or loss of subtle meaning, is the decision to translate faithfully to the text,orofadapting thevariouscultural aspectsof theoriginal to the local environment. This paper has highlighted the issues of authenticity, domestication, personal pronouns, speech presentations, and pronouns as being particularly problematic in translations from English to Japanese, using the early works ofIshiguroforexemplification.ItisundeniablethatIshiguro’sworkshaveprovedtobesuccessful, despite the difficulties of translating, in having not only global relevance, but also significance and success in Japan. Although the settings of the two novels discussed are very local, and some details may strike Japanese readers as awkward, Ishiguro has gained and maintained a universal audience by dealing with how people’s minds operate, andbyexploringhumanphenomenanotonlyuniquetoJapanofaspecificperiod,butglobally applicable. Nevertheless, despite his success as an international novelist, and the consciousness he brings to his desire to write a universal novel transcending translation, there still remain challenges in completely surviving a translation, for inherent differences in culture and language make it almost impossible to attain complete equivalence in translation.

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Notes1 This paper is based on a presentation made at International English Education Forum on

‘English Teaching in Asia’, held at the School of Foreign Languages, Zunyi Medical University, Guizhou, on October 31, 2015.

2 IshigurosaysinaninterviewwithGallixaboutthetwoearlyworks:‘Ihadabitofashockwhen the book was published and every reviewer praised this very carefully constructed voice. Thiswassaidoverandoveragain.’(Gallix,1999,p.136)

3 Etsukofrequentlybows toshowherconsent.Someexamplesare: ‘“Etsuko,mayIaskafavorofyou?”Ibowed’(Ishiguro,1990,p.20),‘Ibowedagain.“I’llenquirewhenInextseeher.”’And‘Ibowed,sayingnothing’(Ishiguro,1990,p.21),althoughthesearetranslatedas‘I nodded’ in Japanese. The visitors to Jiro repeatedly giggle when they made a visit at night, probably because they had been drinking: ‘They stood in the entryway giggling to themselves’. ‘But they remained in the entryway, giggling’ (Ishiguro, 1990, p. 60). ‘Jiro introduced them to his father and they began once more to bow and giggle’ (Ishiguro, 1990, p. 61). Onodera translates them faithfully.

4 Ono’s recollection of his father’s room ‘lit by a single tall candle standing in the centre of the floor’ (Ishiguro,1989,p.41) isanexampleof Ishiguro’sanachronism,and‘aheavyearthenware ashpot’ (Ishiguro, 1989, p. 43) in the reception room supposedly used by his father to burn Ono’s pain is a puzzling object. Ono mentions this is the largest ‘ashpot’ in the household used for guests, and Tobita translates it as an ashtray. It is not clear what Ishiguro meant by this object.

5 Asanexampleofdomestication, theAuthorizedKingJamesVersion(1611)of theBible translates the fable of new wine into old wineskins in Matthew 9:17 as ‘Neither do men put new wine into old bottles: else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish: but they put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved.’

6 ‘Oji’ as a self-specifier is a little unusual term for Japanese grandfathers talking to their grandchildren. Tobita replaces Ishiguro’s Oji with Ojiichan, the self-specifier most commonly used by grandfathers.

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artist of the floating world in Japan. In S. Matthews & S. Gross (Eds.), Kazuo Ishiguro. New YorkandLondon:Continuum.

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About the authorMariko Matsuda (jmatsuda@obirin.ac.jp) is Professor of English and English literature in the College of Global Communication and the Graduate Division of J. F. Oberlin University, Japan. She is also Dean of the Institute of Cornerstone Education at that University. Her research interests include English stylistics, literature in English and narrative theory.

Challenges in Translating ‘International’ Novels: Ishiguro’s Early Works Set in Japan